Mississippi Cotton (26 page)

Everyone turned toward Ben after she mentioned Marcus killing two “niggers.” Now, after fifty years the truth was out. The two former slaves, Ben’s momma and daddy, had been murdered. There was no panther. The claw marks and tracks had been faked. A trowel and a leg he had severed from a panther he had killed served his bloody scene, she told everybody. Ben said nothing. BB hung his head and stared at the long wooden floor boards.

“He jus’ laughed and laughed.” She looked down at her bag. It wasn’t the same one she had had on the bus, but it was almost as big. “That’s when I reached in my bag and pulled out my little pistol. I shot him twice. Then I took his pocket watch and o’er sixty dollars from his pocket. He probably’d stolen it so I figured I’d jus’ steal it from him.”

She had pulled out her makins’ and was fumbling to put together a cigarette. Tobacco spilled onto her lap. The sheriff leaned forward and offered a Lucky Strike. “Well now, thank you, sir. You are a real gentleman.”

He struck a match on the bottom of his shoe and lit her cigarette. He spoke for the first time since her arrival. “Then what’d you do, Miss Sarah?”

“I put some rocks in his pocket and drug him by his leg to the river. It wasn’t that hard even for an ol’ simple-minded gal like me. He had gotten a bit frail in his old age. He floated jus’ a bit and got hung in some bushes. That made me think he might not float down the river for a few days. Or at least ‘til the river come up. I guess I really didn’t care by then.”

“What kind of a gun was it, Sarah?” Mr. O’Grady broke his silence.

She took a deep draw on the cigarette, exhaled a stream of smoke and remained calm. “It was one of them little Deringer guns. Shot two bullets. Two little bullets.”

“Like maybe .22 bullets?” the sheriff suggested.

“I guess,” she said. “B’longed to my late husband.” She took another draw on her cigarette.

“Where is the gun now?

“At the bus station in Yazoo City,” I blurted out. “In a locker.”

Taylor and Casey looked at me like I had lost my mind. Children were supposed to be seen and not heard. The rule was branded into our souls, especially when grownups were having a conversation. And this was definitely a grownups’ conversation—murder and all.

Everybody looked at me astonished, as if I were a pot plant that had just spoken. The straw-haired lady smiled at me, smoke flowing through her nostrils.

“Now, whadaya mean, Jake?” Cousin Trek spoke first.

“Yazoo City?” said Cousin Carol.

The sheriff and Mr. O’Grady jumped in. “Do you know something, Jake?”

The straw haired lady looked straight ahead and drew on her Lucky Strike. She turned and smiled at me. “This un’s a fine young fellow.” Smoke poured from her nose.

CHAPTER 20

She talked for over an hour. She told them that I was right about Yazoo City, the gun being in the locker and all. I remembered asking her about the huge bag. It was the same bag that contained the cigarette lighter, the lighter that looked like a real pistol. Except that it was a pistol after all. I hadn’t even thought at the time she might have put her bag in the bus station lockers. I just knew that she had gone into the bus station with it and come out without it.

She told the sheriff how she had called Ben and BB the night BB said they had “been invited,” and reminded him who she was—the young daughter of Elizabeth Nash who had left town one day and never came back. She told them to drive down to the bridge where they would find a man who had wanted to take away Looty’s land. She said it was the same man who once tried to get Ben’s a long time ago.

“When we got below the bridge we didn’t find anything at first,” said BB. “She had said not to look for a man standing on the bridge or fishin’ below it. We had a pretty good idea we were lookin’ for somebody in it. And it didn’t sound like he was swimmin’ neither. At first we just saw some old beer cans and a few sardine cans where people had been eatin’ while they were fishin’. Things like that. The sun was down but it wasn’t dark yet, so we could still see in the water pretty good. That’s when I saw him, the dead man, tangled in some old dead limbs floatin’ to the bank.”

The sheriff lit one of his Lucky Strikes and offered one to Sarah. She took one. BB and Ben just shook their heads and thanked him.

“Now what’s this business about catchin’ him on a fishin’ line? That’s jus’ something y’all made up?”

“Yes, sir. We didn’t know what to do. Getting a strange phone call and all, then findin’ a body. We didn’t think we could leave him there. We’d for sure be in trouble if somebody saw us and we hadn’t told anybody. We jus’ took our fishin’ poles and stuff so it would look like we had gone fishin’. You know, just in case. So it would look like we just happened to find him. We didn’t even know if he was there, for sure.”

Cousin Carol took a package of Dentyne chewing gum from her purse and handed Taylor and Casey and me a piece. She put a piece in her mouth, violating a basic rule of etiquette that ladies didn’t chew gum in public.

“We hadn’t done anything and we jus’ worried that if we told the truth nobody’d believe us,” BB said. “So Daddy and I jus’ made up the story about catchin’ a big catfish and all that.”

Ben looked at the sheriff. “And I had jus’ talked to Miss Sarah here on the phone. Hadn’t seed her for forty years. I couldn’t be for sure it was her. Me and Julius wuz mixed up on what to do. We worried that you mighta talked to Mr. Looty, and he thought he shoulda shot that man, even if he was his daddy. You know, on account of Mr. Looty is …you know…kinda slow. Julius here always been friends with Mr. Looty and wanted to protect him from something foolish. I’m sorry, Miss Sarah. I wuzn’t tryin’ to blame you”

“Well, Ben, it looks very much like she is to blame,” Big Trek said.

Miss Sarah smiled as she blew smoke through her nose, as if she knew what she had done but didn’t feel one bit guilty.

I think Big Trek had said it jus’ to remind Ben and BB that they needn’t feel afraid. I guess it really wasn’t clear yet what they had done. But now I knew that the reason Ben had come to Cousin Trek’s house the night of the storm was because he knew he could trust the Mayfield family.

“Well, what did you do next, Sarah?” Mr. O’Grady asked. “You were gone by the time Ben and BB got there.”

“I started ridin’ the bus south, away from the Delta. Thought I might go all the way to Mobile or Biloxi or someplace. I had his sixty dollars. I only got to Flora when I changed my mind. I sat there all night outside that little store where the bus stops, waiting for the bus to be comin’ back the next day. I decided to go back to Clarksdale. My momma was born there. I jus’ wanted to go home, I guess.

“But I wanted to go see Looty, too. My boy. He didn’t know me. Didn’t know who I was. But, he came to Clarksdale as soon as I called him. He hadn’t seen me since he was a baby, but he knew I was his momma right away, I b’lieve. I don’t know how. He jus’ knew. I told him about his daddy. We went to the bridge together Sunday from Clarksdale. I showed him where his daddy died.”

Looty did not break his silence, but he didn’t have to. He looked at Sarah and smiled, and she returned it. It was like he was looking in a mirror and the mirror reflected his feelings with the same smile, the same plain smile.

The clock struck three o’clock reminding us we had been here over three hours. The story, the crime, all the mystery that had hung over us for the last week had all been revealed. But I had forgotten something, something the sheriff hadn’t. Something Ben and BB hadn’t.

The sheriff pulled up a chair and drew himself as close to Ben as he could get. “What do y’all know about this watch, Ben?” He handed Ben the watch, and we watched as he opened it.

I had never seen a man cry, not colored or white. I had been told that they did, but I had never seen it, not even in the picture show. I thought after a boy got to a certain age, he never was supposed to do it again. But when the sheriff asked Ben about the watch, Ben took on a tragic look; his eyes got wet and seemed to sparkle. BB put his arm around his daddy. Then a tear rolled down Ben’s brown face. And he closed the watch.

CHAPTER 21

Our 1949 Oldsmobile was coming down the gravel road toward the house. I was halfway up the windmill, Taylor was near the top, and Casey was two steps from the bottom, all on the lookout.

I was the first to see them. “There they come. That’s our car.”

“Your daddy must be drivin’. Goin’ too slow to be Farley,” Taylor hollered down to Casey and me from his perch under the blades.

Casey was holding on with one hand, his arm outstretched, swinging back and forth with one foot on the windmill.

“Move, Casey.” I was climbing down and my next step was on top of his head. “And anyway, Farley can’t drive fast when he’s with my mother and daddy.”

Cousin Carol and Cousin Trek came out into the yard. Big Trek was rocking on the porch, and I glanced at him as we started to the end of the driveway, his pipe hooked to the corner of his mouth, hanging from a huge grin.

By the time the car stopped, we had gathered, ready for the hugging, kissing, and squealing, and handshakes, and all that comes together in a family when you haven’t seen someone for more than an hour. Farley and I had given up trying to avoid it, and had accepted it like having to visit the dentist every once in a while. So you just stood in line and tried not to go limp when they squeezed you like a melon.

It had been only three weeks since I had seen my mother and daddy at the bus station. But my mother buttonholed me like I had just been rescued from North Korea. Then after kissing me like I was a pet collie, she rubbed almost all the skin off my face trying to get her lipstick off me with a tissue from her purse.

On the other hand, Daddy gave me a modest hug since I still wasn’t at the handshaking age, and released me with a playful brush of my hair.

Farley just punched me in the stomach and whispered, “Good to see ya, ya little stoop.” Short for stupid.

The greeting and hugs and handshakes soon subsided and we went into the house. After the bags were taken up to the rooms and everybody was arrived and greeted, Cousin Carol said, “Let’s go out on the porch. It’s a bit cooler out there. And I’ll bring us some iced tea.”

“I’ll help you,” my mother offered. “Ohhh! It’s so good to see y’all.” Greetings were like goodbyes—they seemed to linger. It was just part of life, I guess.

The rest of us went out on the porch. The grownups went to one end where Big Trek usually sat and smoked his pipe. Casey, Taylor and I went to the other. Farley wasn’t sure at first where he wanted to go. He was at that awkward age where he was too old to talk with kids but too young to talk with old people. He finally came to us. I think Taylor and Casey wanted to talk about his driver’s license and were glad he came to our end.

“Did Cousin David let you drive up here?” Taylor asked.

“Some of the way. I drove past Flora, then a little more. Daddy says highway drivin’ is more dangerous because people go faster on the highway. He’d only let me go fifty-five.”

“So, I guess that means you ain’t going to New Orleans by yourself anytime soon,” Casey said. We all laughed. Farley tried to pretend he wasn’t insulted. But when a guy got his driver’s license, he was supposed to be free.

“Well, that’ll be when I get to college. That’s when you can really go where you want—as long as your parents send you money,” said Farley.

“Speaking of money,” I said, “I made o’er eighteen dollars since I came up. Maybe Daddy’ll let you use the car and take us to town tonight.”

“What’ll we do? Anything to do besides go to the picture show in ol’ Cotton City?”

“Not since Dixie Daniels left,” Taylor said. Smiles.

“Took her trained hamsters with her,” Casey said. Giggles.

“What’re y’all talkin’ about?”

Taylor, Casey and I all tried keeping straight faces. Farley knew we were making a joke about something, but he wasn’t sure just what, except it sounded like it was about him.

“Oh, never mind,” I said.

Cousin Carol and Mother came out. Cousin Carol had a tray with several glasses filled with iced tea. Mother had one with a pitcher full and some sugar and iced tea spoons. We all took a glass and thanked her.

“Now y’all don’t worry about that old table there. You don’t need coasters. It’s old and beat up and has more rings than a hundred-year-old oak.”

“Yes, ma’am.” We hadn’t been worried about the table, but we didn’t say so.

“I don’t s’pose they got a pinball machine anywhere in town now, huh?” Farley asked.

“Naa, checkers at the gazebo or dominoes in the back room of the café are the only games in Cotton City,” Taylor said. “And dominoes are out for us. Even if they weren’t, I heard Big Trek say one time that those guys are the best in the world. ‘Hard to beat a Mississippi domino player,’ he said.”

“But a great picture show. Flying Leathernecks, John Wayne. It’s in color, too. First time it’s been to Cotton City,” I said.

“Okay. I can go for John Wayne.”

Casey, sitting on the floor with his back to the porch screen, bellowed the length of the porch, “Hey, Daddy, can we tell ‘em about the dead man and Miss Sarah and Looty and ever’body now?”